Studio ST Architects

01/12/2026

1stdibs featured a townhouse we designed. Check it out!

September 7, 2025“It’s like the West Village of the Upper East Side,” designer Alyssa Kapito says of New York’s Carnegie Hill, where she recently reimagined an 1899 townhouse for a family. Beyond its enduring draws — the Guggenheim, the Cooper Hewitt, block after block of neatly aligned Qu...

05/19/2025

Design studies for a kitchen renovation with Maggie Rosenblatt Design. Renderings by Oaki.studio.

03/05/2025

Sneak peek of a beautiful townhouse renovation we did with Alyssa Kapito Interiors photographed by Stephen K Johnson.

01/13/2025

We renovated of the 14th Street Y, which is part of the JCC network of community centers, back in 2010. The design celebrates the diversity of its multi-generational, multi-ethnic membership. The ground floor lobby, fitness center, locker rooms, offices, showers and pool were redesigned as a series of parallel bands, each with its own identity. As members move through the different bands, they experience the simultaneous happenings that animate the building. By using off-the-shelf, low cost materials in unconventional ways, the architects created a unique design within a tight budget. Fields of fluorescent light fixtures of different sizes redraw the ceiling, while bands of colored tiles reconfigure the floor plane. The new entrance lobby has a custom gradient patterned tile floor, a field of circular fluorescent lights, and bright yellow 100% recycled plastic lounge furniture. The overall effect is raw, fresh and befitting the 14th Street Y Community Center’s location in the East Village in New York. The renovation was completed on time and on budget over one summer.

with Z-A Studio
Photography: Bilyana Dimitrova

01/03/2025

Safe, but Not Like a Bunker': Synagogue Renovations Breathing New Life Into Diaspora Communities
Great story in Haaretz by Bridget Goldberg about synagogue renovations featuring a few of our project.

"...This trend for redesigning existing synagogues stems from the growing awareness that the construction industry's heavy use of resources is a major contributor to climate change.

However, it is not only about revitalizing buildings but also revitalizing Jewish life.

New York architect Esther Sperber, an Israeli who has lived in the United States for 25 years, has drawn up numerous synagogue renovations across the country. With her firm Studio ST Architects, she renovated Chicago's Skokie Valley Synagogue last year – transforming a dated and dark 1960s structure into a light-filled, contemporary building.

That project features brick walls repainted with white limewash, a brighter entryway and coatroom, new bathrooms and lighter interiors thanks to added skylights and improved lighting. By rotating the seating arrangement, a redesigned worship area lets those in the Modern Orthodox shul be closer to the rabbi or cantor and also allows them to face east toward Jerusalem.

For Sperber, aesthetics and ethics are intertwined with her synagogue renovations that prioritize making older people and younger generations feel comfortable and welcome through resourceful design.
..The architect explains that one of the main motivations the community had "was to create a new, bigger lobby and create spaces that were bright, air-conditioned and accessible to those with disabilities. It's about safety as much as dignity."

The synagogue now doubles as a community center and accommodates bar-mitzvah luncheons, lectures and even gymnastics in its new social hall, she says. She notes that "social hall" is a typical term, since sanctuaries are for the religious ceremonies and halls for events.

The architect explains that one of the main motivations the community had "was to create a new, bigger lobby and create spaces that were bright, air-conditioned and accessible to those with disabilities. It's about safety as much as dignity."

The synagogue now doubles as a community center and accommodates bar-mitzvah luncheons, lectures and even gymnastics in its new social hall, she says. She notes that "social hall" is a typical term, since sanctuaries are for the religious ceremonies and halls for events.

She also upgraded the building's security at Ansche Chesed with a new security guard booth and lockdown system. "It's important for the congregation to feel safe, but you also don't want it to feel like a bunker," she says. "The challenge is to do the things that need to be done so people are safe, but not make it feel like a fortress."

12/16/2024

Cold weather bring to mind fireplaces.

12/04/2024

A few weeks ago, I walked by my childhood home. It reminded me of a lecture I gave a few years ago titled "Home and the Poetics of Space" a few years ago.

“When I say “home” I still think of my childhood home. I grew up in Jerusalem, in an apartment on the second floor of a small building. I lived in this home with my parents, my nine sisters and brothers, our dog, an outside cat; my grandmother moved in with us later on. Despite the tight quarters, my mother insisted that each child needed a private space, so she divided the high-ceilinged space into many lofts and tiny rooms.

We never really had a living room, the center of activity was the large, sun filled, kitchen. A platter of nuts and dried fruit was always waiting for the stream of friends and strangers that passed through. While the kitchen was the social heart of our home, my father’s library was its intellectual, almost sacred, counterpart. In it were over 10,000 books including some ancient manuscripts. We knew not to interrupt my father's studies except to tell him that dinner was ready, yet we were always welcome to enter if we had a question about our homework of when we wanted to discuss a personal problem.

But “home” was not limited our apartment. Home included the eclectic group of neighbors, a collage of the Israeli society in the seventies, that lived in the building. On the ground floor, and with exclusive use of the garden, lived Rosa. She was a short, elderly woman from Istanbul with a bright gold tooth and a husband who owned a cluttered shoe shop downtown. His children from a previous marriage constantly fought with her and she in turn, yelled at us for making noise.

Next to Rosa lived a family that had recently immigrated to Israel from Uzbekistan and opened their dental practice in the front room of their apartment.

One could enter the Makolet - a bodega style grocery store - directly from the street, and we got milk and bread every morning. Berger and Genzel, the owners, lived down the block on “HaPortzim” the one-way street on which Netanyahu’s parents lived. We whispered about the numbers tattooed on their arm, people said they met in the concentration camp..."

https://buff.ly/3Vpf3pD

11/20/2024

This home was designed for a recently married older couple who had separate homes filled with lifelong possessions and different aesthetic styles. The newly renovated space transforms three units into a spacious, light-filled modern apartment with an efficient and open circulation. The cohesive design combines the downtown loft, artistic sensibility of one partner, with the utilitarian taste of the other. A natural, muted palette including off-white, green and taupe act as a clean backdrop for the owner’s eclectic, stylish furniture and art collection. Wood floors and white oak millwork envelop the space with warmth, and different types of marble elegantly invigorate the kitchen and bathrooms. Bronze screens in the shape of thin tree branches encourage light to flood into the dining room and through the living room wet bar. The now open and flowing apartment allows the homeowners to enjoy these artistic elements that punctuate and define the spaces.
Photos
Design
Kitchen

11/13/2024

Sketch for sustainable farming center with farm to table teaching ktichen.

10/22/2024

Books are cherished for their intellectual content and their emotional impact or because they were a gift from a dear friend. Take a look at a few images of bookcases we have designed over the last decades.

10/09/2024

האדם במרכז: בתי כנסת באירופה ובארה"ב משנים פניהם -
כתבה בהארץ
Bridget Goldberg Studio ST Architects

הארץ

10/09/2024

Safe, but Not Like a Bunker': Synagogue Renovations Breathing New Life Into Diaspora Communities - Haaretz story by Bridget Goldberg Studio ST Architects

***